Foreword
A few weeks ago I received a call from a client. She asked if I could send “that model document” I’d created earlier in the project in order to roll out what was a global project on an impossible timeline. I was surprised. That model document was, in fact, a concept model diagram I’d created strictly for myself—not the client, not the project team. In fact, when I tried to share it with the team early on, their eyes seem to lose focus while I explained what I believed to be a perfectly organized diagram, one that helped me fill the gap between requirements and design. But now the client was requesting its presence in a moment where the project needed focus. The project manager had seen it—poster size—behind my desk and knew at a glance it would bring needed clarity to the project.
This has been my experience in almost a decade of knowing Dan Brown’s work. Over the years I have known him, where we have needed clarity, Dan Brown has provided it. What he does so well is separate the idea from the document so that a diagram is fluid and flexible, and importantly, he is agnostic about methodology. Dan’s no prescriptivist.
The artist Sol LeWitt, who was known for separating the concept of a work from the execution of a work, in the 1970s explored making instructions intentionally vague so that others could interpret them. He gave his teams and the galleries who showed his work latitude to interpret his instructions, “Vertical lines, not straight, not touching, covering the wall evenly,” he said to describe Wall Drawing #86, one in a series of visual diagrams. It was up to the galleries to interpret them. If two were the same, so be it. If they were different, that was that. While the instructions were given in the same way, it was the input of others that differentiated the pieces.
As designers, it’s our role to issue instructions to those we work with. Clarity is paramount, whether we work as part of a team or a large organization with a process or a single freelancer working remotely with a team over Skype—we often use diagrams, or deliverables, to communicate our ideas. Dan’s natural approach to creating clear diagrams can support a web team of any size and is a critical resource for students of user experience. As an educator, I have looked to Communicating Design both as a formal textbook and an informal guide. Its design systems ultimately make our ideas possible and the complex clear. Successful diagrams let us communicate.
Documentation used to be a dirty word in web design. Everyone knew its value, yet no one wanted to talk about it. I first came across Dan’s diagrams in 2002 at a conference for information architects, and was immediately taken. Dan wasn’t afraid of documentation. And over the course of one conference, we had decided to publish his diagrams in a magazine called Boxes and Arrows, making them accessible to a wider audience. Eight years later, I’m looking forward to having this second edition accessible for many to experience.
Sometimes the way you design is just as important as what you design. You will come to this book knowing the “what” already. This book shows you the way.
Liz Danzico
Chair, MFA Interaction Design
School of Visual Arts